Ailin Firoozian Pooresfahani; Ferdows Aghagolzadeh; Arsalan Golfam; Aliyeh Kord-e Zafaranlu Kambuziya
Volume 10, Issue 19 , January 2019, , Pages 1-21
Abstract
Extended Abstract Introduction Although it is believed that language is the sheer truth (Cook, 2003), this fact should not be ignored that language specifically the socio-political discourse is sometimes used to conceal the truth and conveys the purport the way that affects people and persuade them ...
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Extended Abstract Introduction Although it is believed that language is the sheer truth (Cook, 2003), this fact should not be ignored that language specifically the socio-political discourse is sometimes used to conceal the truth and conveys the purport the way that affects people and persuade them to accept the untruth. The translator who is responsible for transferring the content that in turn, includes meta-language elements such as culture, history, politics, authority, and different ideologies from the source language (SL) to the target language (TL) and by manipulating and altering the linguistic forms of source language, he affects the readers' schools of thoughts and feelings and finally lead them to a certain ideology (Mason, 2010; Penycook, 2004). therefore, it can be said that in a translation process, the translator can convey the source of language's content to the target language the way he likes by applying diverse strategies and techniques, consciously or unconsciously (Schäffner, 2007, 2009). As far as the way a socio-political translator’s choice of any of the linguistic forms considerably influences the reader’s mind, the research aims to augment the precision of translations done by students of English translation from different social classes, to improve people's critical thinking, to find and analyze manipulative syntactic structures of socio-political texts, and to express translators’ ideology or the dominant ideology of their society. Theoretical Framework The framework of this paper is based on critical discourse analysis and socio-cognitive Van Dijk’s approach (2004). His analytical method, suggest two levels of analysis: macro level and micro level. Macro-level is related to the analysis of meta-linguistic elements such as ideology. For investigating this level in this study, “ideological square” defined by Van Dijk (2004) will be used. The concept of this square based on polarization, designate the following dimensions: Emphasizing our positive actions or properties Mitigating their positive properties and actions Emphasizing their negative properties and actions Mitigating our negative properties and actions Microstructure as another level is related to the analysis of the text in terms of linguistic forms. This research focuses on all syntactic strategies which might be applied by translators’ in order to represent their ideologies. Methodology Among approximately 600 texts collected from different written English socio-political content that were translated to Persian language and were limited to national, international or regional issues related to subjects about Iran, 250 utterances were selected for analyzing. These excerpts had the most obvious syntactic manipulation done by Persian translators. They were taken from written news, interviews, resolutions and the like from different sources such as websites, press, and magazines. Searching all syntactic strategies and manipulations, the Persian translators’ ideology were then challenged within CDA framework and Van Dijk’s theoretical pattern (2004). After that, Van Dijk’s ideological square was used to analyze how Our and Their actions and properties were polarized and how they were reflected in translation were examined. In the end, the frequency of the applied syntactic strategies was calculated. Results and Discussion In this part of the research according to Van Dijk’s theoretical pattern (2004), the frequency and percentage of each syntactic manipulations including eight strategies (word order, passivization, topicalization, nominalization, addition, deletion, modality and tense shift) which were used to manipulate the syntactic structures of English (ST) in order to convey Persian translator’s dominant or intended ideology, are excluded and analyzed. Conclusion and Suggestions The conclusions show that the syntactic strategies and manipulations do have a salient role in representing Persian translators’ ideologies in English written translated socio-political texts through the polarization of us and them. In other words, the effectiveness of syntax, manipulations, and changes made on syntactic structures and the Van Dijk’s theoretical pattern (2004) syntactic strategies could considerably echo the Persian translators’ ideologies in translated socio-political English discourses. Hence, studying these analyses clearly demonstrates that the major strategies or strategies used for emphasizing and mitigating actions in the content that Van Dijk explained in his ideological square has been significantly effective in justifying syntactic changes and the manipulations done by Persian translators. Also, comparing syntactic frequencies showed that the findings of the mostly applied strategies such as deletion and addition represent that among all such strategies, Persian translators pick the clearest and most direct way to express intended ideologies and hitherto, they have been trying to affect the meaning and the ideology of the target language indirectly. As far as the current research chose to study syntax among different discourse terms, studying other terms can show a more comprehensible picture of changes that represent the efforts translators have made to demonstrate beliefs, principles, personal and social culture through words, structures, and ideological meanings.
Seyed Mohammad Hosseini; Ferdows Aghagolzadeh; Aliyeh Kord Zaferanlou Kambouzia; Arsalan Golfam
Volume 9, Issue 17 , July 2018, , Pages 121-152
Abstract
Extended abstract
1- Introduction
Recent research on im/politeness in interpersonal pragmatics has witnessed a move away from Brown and Levinson’s (1987) much criticized face-saving theory (e.g., Eelen, 2001; Watts, 2003) towards more relational and interactional models that approach face and politeness ...
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Extended abstract
1- Introduction
Recent research on im/politeness in interpersonal pragmatics has witnessed a move away from Brown and Levinson’s (1987) much criticized face-saving theory (e.g., Eelen, 2001; Watts, 2003) towards more relational and interactional models that approach face and politeness as distinct concepts (Arundale, 1999, 2006, 2009, 2010; Terkourafi, 2007; O’Driscoll, 2007). One consequence of this is the call to investigate the emic concept of face, as it is understood by ordinary people, before any theoretical notion of face can be designated (Arundale, 1999, 2006, 2009, 2010, 2013; Bargiela-Chiappini, 2003; Haugh, 2009, 2013b; Haugh & Bargiela-Chiappini, 2010). This research is a response to this call and tries to analyze emic understandings of the concept of āberu (lit. water-of-face) as the closest equivalent of face in the Iranian culture.
2- Literature Review
Despite numerous researches on im/politeness in Persian, very few people have directly addressed the concept of face in the Iranian culture. Koutlaki (2002, 2009) argues that ehterām and shakhsiat are two aspects of face in the Iranian culture. Sharifian (2007) and Izadi (2017) offer āberu as the Persian equivalent of face in this culture. However, none of them does an ethnographic study of āberu idioms and collocations.
3- Methodology
An ethnographic approach is adopted. Ethnography is a method used to describe everyday human behavior, relying heavily on participant observation in natural settings (Leeds-Hurwitz, 2005). To gather the data, ethnographic field notes were taken of the actual uses of āberu and its idiomatic expressions and collocations in everyday conversations, TV serials, websites and weblogs, paying special attention to all possibly relevant contextual clues. The instances were then semantically analyzed in their contexts of use and a classification of the results was made.
4- Results and Discussion
An analysis of āberu idiomatic expressions and collocations shows that the domain of interpersonal relations is understood in terms of the domain of economic activity and the conceptual metaphor (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980) of “ĀBERU IS A COMMODITY” can be applied to it. The exact nature of this commodity is ‘water’, which has always been a rare and hard-to-find resource in the dry and arid climate of Iran. Āberu is the most valuable commodity a person, or group, can ‘possess’ that can be ‘spilled’, ‘bought’, ‘sold’, ‘pawned’, ‘exchanged with money’, or even ‘auctioned’. The “ĀBERU IS A COMMODITY” metaphor gives the impression that āberu is ‘possessed’ by the individual (or group), but the data shows that this āberu exists only in the presence, or perception of the presence, of an ‘other’ and within an interaction. Therefore, it is not a possession of the individual but, as argued by Arundale (2006, 2009, 2013), is a property of the interaction (cf. Goffman, 1967).
The results also show four main uses of the word āberu in the Iranian culture. First, a person’s āberu is connected to the āberu (i.e., good name or reputation) of the group(s), one is associated with at the moment of interaction (Sharifian, 2007; Izadi, 2015, 2017). The group can be as small as the nuclear family or as big as a guild, the whole nation or even all humanity. The most important group is the family, which is then used as a metaphor to invoke protection of the āberu of larger social units such as a company, an organization or even the government.
Second, āberu is linked to people’s sense of competence (cf. Lim & Bowers, 1991), including possessions (i.e., competence in earning a decent living). Any perception of incompetence in the eyes of mardom, ‘the people’ or ‘significant others’ may lead to the feeling of āberurizi (lit. ‘Spillage of water-of-face’) or face loss.
Third, āberu is linked to the distinction, in Iranian life, between the two domains of zāher/birun (outside) and bāten/andarun (inside) referred to by Beeman (1986). If something that belongs to the realm of inside is revealed in the domain of outside, one may feel a loss of āberu. Things that must not be revealed in the outside cover a large list, including secrets, antisocial behavior or thoughts, any infringement of moral values and norms, misconduct, etc.
Finally, a person’s āberu is linked to their perceived sha’n or social status, which is defined according to age, education, rank in an organization or institutional power, occupation and gender.
Loss of āberu may lead to the feeling of sharm, i.e., shame, which then places the Iranian culture closer to the shame end of the shame/guilt (Benedict, 1946; Ho, 1976) continuum.
Āberu in the Iranian culture covers a larger extent of meanings than adab (politeness), which is considered as formal behavior appropriate to the context. Although āberu is part of the moral order (Garfinkel, 1967) against which im/politeness judgments are based (Haugh, 2013a; Kádár & Haugh, 2013), it is not accurate to equate politeness with face-saving strategies.
5- Conclusion
In the Iranian culture, my āberu in my eyes is the image I think others have of me and my āberu in others’ eyes is the image they have of me based on my social status and my verbal and nonverbal behavior. The results also indicate that while most of the descriptions of face in Goffman (1967) apply to āberu, group face, especially a family’s face, may impose a second layer of constraints on individual conduct. It is argued that āberu in Persian is both relational and interactional as claimed in Face Constituting Theory (Arundale, 1999, 2006, 2009, 2013). A person’s perceived social status influences the way people initially treat him in an interaction but this status has to be maintained and renegotiated within current interaction.
Ferdows Aghagolzadeh; ailin firoozian
Volume 8, Issue 14 , November 2016, , Pages 25-49
Abstract
Extended Abstract
1. Introduction
Without a doubt, people communicate their feelings and thoughts through discourse and texts. Every text is formed based on some metalinguistic variables including, culture, history, relations of power, politics, norms, and rules of the society. The author is supposed ...
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Extended Abstract
1. Introduction
Without a doubt, people communicate their feelings and thoughts through discourse and texts. Every text is formed based on some metalinguistic variables including, culture, history, relations of power, politics, norms, and rules of the society. The author is supposed to organize a text considering all these mentioned variables and the translator is expected to take them into account while translating the same text (Wodak & Meyer, 2001). Hence, it can be inferred that the metalinguistic variables find their reflection in the language (the choice of words) both the author and translator employ and therefore, the trace of ideology can be found in all texts (Basnett, 2002; Schäffner, 2009). Moreover, the translator conveys his intended meaning to the reader by clever manipulation of words and structures (Tymoczko & Gentzler, 2002; Mason, 2010).
Considering all mentioned points and despite various ideological discourse structures proposed by Van Dijk (2004), Iranian researchers paid scant attention to the study of style and rhetoric as compared to other discourse structures introduced by Van Dijk (2004). Furthermore, regarding the reciprocal relationship between culture and language and the fact that Persian language is occupied with literary devices for long time, writers of different types of texts especially literary texts make use of these sources. Concerning the paucity of research in this realm, the chief purpose of this paper is to apply the Van Dijk (2004)‘s model as the starting point for critical discourse analysis of Persian political translated texts to arrive at deeper understanding of how political translators use these two discourse structures and their strategies in order to impose their intended ideologies. In addition, we try to uncover the ideological reasons of political translators in applying these two discourse structures.
2. Methodology
To collect data, a corpus of 300 English paragraphs and their translated counterparts in Persian were accurately scrutinized sentence by sentence. All these paragraphs were related to the recently important political issues in Iran which were translated into Persian by translators. This corpus is taken from a comprehensive collection of newspapers, websites, theses, magazines, recorded deals, and so on. To achieve the aim of this study, all sentences in the 300 paragraphs were read meticulously and critically, concentrating on each phrase, clause, and sentence separately and in conjunction with the neighboring phrases, clauses, and sentences. They were searched for the strategies of style and rhetoric; the strategy of style includes lexicalization and rhetoric is composed of 7 strategies which are simile, number game, irony, repetition, hyperbole, dramatization, and metaphor. Subsequently, one example was given for each strategy.
3. Discussion
The analysis of results exhibited that among 300 paragraphs taken into account, 50 instances of lexicalization were found; the reasons of applying such strategies were not the same throughout these paragraphs translated by different translators. The researchers cited three reasons behind making use of lexicalization which are as follows: 1) ideological lexicalization 2) stylistic lexicalization 3) complementary lexicalization (i.e., the translator resorts to the use of two strategies simultaneously, one of which is lexicalization, to express his ideology more effectively). The complementary lexicalization was classified into three groups: a) lexicalization and generalization b) lexicalization and euphemism c) lexicalization and nominalization. This finding is in line with the Ideological Square of Van Dijk (2004). Furthermore, the finding showed that the occurrences of the strategies of rhetoric were just equal to 7.
4. Conclusion
The results indicated that the frequency of employing rhetoric strategies was much less than the use of the style strategy. This would mean that the translators enjoyed more tendency to apply lexicalization strategy than the rhetoric ones. As a matter of fact, rhetoric strategies may embrace literary devices, the abundance of which can be apparently seen in Persian language and culture. However, it was found that Persian translators showed less tendency to use rhetoric strategies to reflect their own ideology. This result may lend support to the fact that political texts are mostly written in direct and straight manner and as a result, translators would prefer to use lexicalization strategy more frequently than rhetoric strategies.
Every scientific enquiry opens new directions for further research. Future directions for research in this area would be to survey political discourses in other countries and compare their results with the results of current study. Since this study focused on written discourse, it is engrossing to conduct another study to deal with spoken discourse.
Aliyeh Kord Zafaranlu Kambuziya; Ferdows Aghagolzade; Sakineh Navidi Baghi
Volume 6, Issue 10 , July 2014, , Pages 25-49
Abstract
This research aims to explore the observance of Syllable Contact Law (SCL) in Persian simple words. To achieve this aim, 4661 contacts were extracted from 9553 simple polysyllabic words. Results show that in 45% of the syllable boundaries the sonority drops from the coda of the first syllable to the ...
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This research aims to explore the observance of Syllable Contact Law (SCL) in Persian simple words. To achieve this aim, 4661 contacts were extracted from 9553 simple polysyllabic words. Results show that in 45% of the syllable boundaries the sonority drops from the coda of the first syllable to the onset of the next one. Also in 68% of the consonant contacts in pure Persian words SCL is observed. Therefore, we conclude that although the SCL is not observed in Persian polysyllabic simple words, it is observed in most consonant contacts of pure Persian data.
